National

Arnwine Resigns as Head of Lawyers’ Committee

Published

12 years ago

March 25, 2015

by George E. Curry
NNPA Editor-in-Chief

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Barbara R. Arnwine does not back down from a fight. After the U.S. Supreme Court issued a series of rulings that limited the rights of employees to sue their employers for discrimination, she was a key player in a coalition that effectively reversed the rulings by persuading Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1991.

When many members of her own staff at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law were reluctant to file suits against federal agencies in connection with Hurricane Katrina, she persisted, eventually winning a couple of landmark verdicts.

And when so-called progressive forces urged her to be quiet about voter suppression in the wake of Barack Obama’s election as the nation’s first Black president, Arnwine was not deterred, issuing a famous “map of shame” identifying the states where such activity was underway.

The Lawyers’ Committee has announced that after 33 years –26 at the national level and seven years with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of the Boston Bar Association – Arnwine will step down as president and executive director, effective June 30.

“She has steered the Lawyers’ Committee into a more active public policy role on a wide range of contemporary civil rights issues, including the response to Ferguson,” said Marc H. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League. “She has been a valued colleague, and a faithful servant. We will miss her leadership.”

Ralph G. Neas, former chairman of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 organizations, said, “Barbara has been a tireless champion on behalf of civil rights for all Americans. Especially noteworthy were her leadership in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.”

Arnwine started thinking about retiring five years ago, but was urged to postpone her move until after the organization could get through a capital drive and observance of the group’s 50^th anniversary.

“Then, of course, all the voter suppression stuff started to happen. When that happened, there was no way I could go,” she said.

Energized by yet another fight, the high-energy Arnwine was the point person in the fight against voter suppression.

Morial said, “To execute the election protection effort, she marshaled countless people hours, donated by volunteer lawyers, to staff a hotline, which served as an essential tool for the entire civil rights community.”

It was her “map of shame” that riveted the Black community. In 2011, her organization produced a color-coded map of the United States detailing efforts to suppress the Black and Brown vote.

Unlike many who were discouraged by the brazen political power grab, Arnwine said as a student of history, she had come to expect such shenanigans.

“I know that you only advance when you’re vigilant and you fight constantly,” she explained. “In fact, one of the theories I talk about is that some expect Black progress to be linear when, in fact, it zig-zags. We make tremendous advances and then there’s a backlash – people fight against it.

“Sometimes you’re zigging and zagging at the same time. You can have a President Obama elected, in part because of the Black vote, but at the same time have voter suppression.”

A larger problem, Arnwine said, is that America refuses to address racism in a meaningful way.

“If the goal is White supremacy and Black subordination, and you don’t have the structural mechanisms built into society to destroy that imperative, then the imperative is going to operate,” she said. “The laws are helpful in fighting that imperative, but we don’t have enough structures. People are scared to fight structural racism.”

When asked why, she quickly replied, “Because it’s real change.”

In one of her proudest moments, she brought about real change for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

“Before we filed that lawsuit, I had to fight people on my own staff,” she recalled. “Some refused to work on it and said it was far-fetched.”

John Britton, her legal director, didn’t share that view. And the Lawyers’ Committee successfully sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), contending the agency had a legal obligation to provide housing assistance to victims of natural disasters.

She was invited to address some of the victims at a small church in Gulfport, Miss.

“I will never forget it,” she recounted. “It was a speech I gave where so many people were openly crying. I talked about how God moves even in the midst of tragedy…It was a profound moment. I said to the people that as long were they were willing to fight, that we would be fighting with them; that we weren’t going to be disappearing when the cameras disappeared; that we weren’t going to disappear when the money disappeared; that we weren’t going to disappear when all the volunteers started leaving. I said the Lawyers’ Committee was going to commit itself for the long-range fight for that community and we did. That’s something I am very proud of. We ended up winning over $170 million in a lawsuit against HUD [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] that helped build housing for that region’s poor people who had been ignored.”

Last May, Arnwine was a finalist for president of the NAACP.

One NAACP board member told the NNPA News Service at the time, “All of our civil rights organizations have a problem with a woman serving as their chief, day-to-day spokesperson. Second, the clique that runs the board wants someone they can control, not someone like Barbara, who is talented and her own person.”

Arnwine said is not ready to announce what she calls her “encore career” will be. She is hosting a weekly radio program in Washington, D.C. that she hopes to expand. She plans to do more public speaking. And she hints that she might create a new organization devoted to developing new leadership.

Whatever she decides to do, chances are she’ll be fighting to improve the plight of African Americans and not backing down.

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Listening as a Lifeline: A Doula’s Witness to Black Maternal Health

OAKLAND POST — Maternal mortality and pregnancy-related mortality use different time frames and methods and are not interchangeable. Finalized 2024 CDC data recorded 649 maternal deaths nationally. The overall rate was 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, but for non-Hispanic Black women it was 44.8, compared with 14.2 for White women and 12.1 for Hispanic women.

Published

2 days ago

October 4, 2026

Post News Group

By Antoinette Stewart-Eneh, Special to California Black Media Partners

Word Count: 1058

Note: Client A, B & C, names are withheld for privacy; these accounts reflect my recollections as their Doula.

Client A rocked her hips on a birthing ball, surrounded by pale wood and warm textiles in a softly lit Scandinavian-style office. I was her doula through a Southern California maternal health company combining nurse-led care, technology, and wraparound support.

She was a healthy Black woman in her thirties. Her baby girl was doing well; her partner took notes as we discussed labor and advocacy.

Then we turned to their chosen hospital. I knew it well—and remembered a phrase from another client’s experience: “Policy of Sovereignty.”

Client B had been told she needed a repeat cesarean as a precaution, though the reasoning was unclear. Her obstetrician, who performed her first cesarean two years earlier, had assured her throughout pregnancy that she was healthy, healed, and ready for a vaginal birth. We asked staff to review her chart, consult her obstetrician, and reconsider immediate surgery. Instead, they invoked the “Policy of Sovereignty.”

The physician on duty, we were told, had final authority, regardless of her established care plan. I asked whether an ultrasound or reassessing the baby’s position could offer clarity. Cesareans can be lifesaving. But were Client B’s history, informed consent, and circumstances guiding this decision—or was routine overriding individualized care? We kept asking for her obstetrician. Beneath every request was a deeper question: Was she being heard?

The Numbers Behind the Stories

Statistics arrive in clean columns. The experiences behind them do not.

Maternal mortality and pregnancy-related mortality use different time frames and methods and are not interchangeable. Finalized 2024 CDC data recorded 649 maternal deaths nationally. The overall rate was 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, but for non-Hispanic Black women it was 44.8, compared with 14.2 for White women and 12.1 for Hispanic women.

In California, Black birthing people experienced 56.5 pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 live births during 2020–2022—3.8 times the White rate and four times the Asian rate.

As a doula serving Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, I see faces behind those numbers. I remember concerns raised softly, then firmly, then desperately. I am tired of watching Black families enter spaces meant to protect them, only to discover they must defend themselves while laboring, bleeding, trembling, or recovering.

Returning to Client A

Client A’s labor stretched nearly 48 hours. As her condition worsened, she, her partner, and I asked whether a cesarean should happen sooner. A provider questioned my place as a doula, then said she was next.

Six more hours passed.

She entered surgery visibly ill with a serious uterine infection, her baby malpositioned and stuck. Her partner later recalled the provider saying, “This baby would never have made it through the birth canal.”

Those words landed like a blow. Our urgency had been treated as ignorance. With Client B, we questioned why surgery was inevitable. With Client A, why it was delayed. Doula advocacy is not about one kind of birth. It is about informed consent, individualized care, and timely action. Hospital routine should never outweigh the person carrying the risk.

Survival Cannot Be the Standard

The Black maternal health crisis includes unequal care, untreated conditions, racial bias, delayed referrals, poor communication, and inadequate postpartum support. It is about birth plans respected only until a hospital becomes less busy and postpartum care that asks whether a mother survived, not whether she has what she needs to recover.

Survival cannot be the standard. Technology can support care, but it cannot replace human connection. An algorithm cannot detect fear in a patient’s eyes, and a mission statement alone cannot ensure adequate staffing or culturally responsive care.

The Story of Client C

Before I arrived, I heard the chaos through Client C’s phone. Staff struggled to locate her baby’s heartbeat on an external monitor as her fear and blood pressure rose. I pleaded for an internal electrode before surgery.

“There’s not enough time,” a nurse said.

“I would like to wait for my doula,” Client C called out.

But she was medicated, hurried through consent, and wheeled away while I listened.

In the operating room, after a shift change, another nurse placed an internal electrode and said, “The previous monitor wasn’t working.”

No one responded.

According to her father, the obstetrician avoided eye contact: “We need to move forward.”

Surgery may still have been necessary; that was not mine to determine. But if faulty equipment helped create the emergency, the family deserved acknowledgment and explanation—not silence. No family should have to wonder whether major surgery followed an unavoidable crisis or a machine failure no one recognized in time.

From Prevention to Accountability

After supporting nearly 100 families, I have learned that danger often begins before admission. I have urged clients to seek care—and heard why they feared returning: dismissed pain, harsh words, shame for asking questions.

Care cannot be holistic where Black families do not feel safe enough to speak or return. Representation matters, but providers of color cannot repair inequity alone. They need adequate staffing, mentorship, culturally responsive training, reliable equipment, and colleagues that are reflective of all the aforementioned. It’s not the Black providers job to care for just the Black patients, everyone should have the same goal.

The Momnibus Act, California’s Medi-Cal doula benefit, the Transforming Maternal Health Model and the Perinatal Equity Initiative require more than promises; they need sustained funding, reliable reimbursement and accountable implementation.

Birth should be sacred. Yet too many Black birthing people arrive carrying the burden of proving their pain is real. A doula can listen, educate, comfort, and advocate—but cannot repair a system that refuses to listen. The true measure of progress is what happens when a Black birthing person says, “Something is wrong.”

Are they believed? When equipment fails, is that failure acknowledged? Do families leave not merely alive, but safe, respected, supported, and whole?

Until those answers are consistently yes, California’s maternal health success story remains unfinished.

About the Author

Antoinette Stewart-Eneh is a mother of two, holistic maternal wellness advocate, and birth and postpartum doula who has supported families since 2019. She serves as program operations coordinator for Frontline Doulas, a volunteer client coordinator with the Joy in Birthing Foundation and a childbirth educator in South Los Angeles. She is studying to become a midwife and lactation educator.

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‘We Don’t Talk Trash — We Pick Up Trash!’

OAKLAND POST — Following the cleanup, Jones talked with Richard Johnson, CEO of Formerly Incarcerated Giving Back (FIGB). Johnson said he wanted to bring formerly incarcerated nonprofits together not only to help clean up the city, but also to bring youth with them to mentor the next generation.

Published

2 days ago

October 4, 2026

Post News Group

High Street Coalition volunteers pick up trash on Sept. 26. Left to right are: Jo Ann, Ruben, JoJo, Jess, Jonathan ‘Fitness’ Jones and Linda in front. Photo courtesy of Linda.

By Dr. Maritony Jones, Special to The Post

When community activist Jonathan “Fitness” Jones heard concerns from senior residents in East Oakland about illegal dumping, recurring trash issues and the health hazards they created, he decided that watching the problem was not enough.

Jones, a member of the African American Sports and Entertainment Group (AASEG) and an Oakland Private Industry Council board member, learned that seniors were frustrated by the recurrence of illegal dumping even when trash has been cleared. Recurring trash can contribute to unsanitary conditions, attract rodents and leave residents feeling that their neighborhoods are being overlooked.

On Saturday, Sept. 26, Mr. Jones joined High Street Coalition volunteers at Dick’s Donuts near High Street and Quigley Street, spending the morning picking up trash and helping beautify the surrounding neighborhood.

High Street Coalition volunteers organize community cleanups on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month.

Following the cleanup, Jones talked with Richard Johnson, CEO of Formerly Incarcerated Giving Back (FIGB). Johnson said he wanted to bring formerly incarcerated nonprofits together not only to help clean up the city, but also to bring youth with them to mentor the next generation.

Jones and Johnson discussed developing a community model that brings formerly incarcerated individuals, Oakland youth and nonprofit organizations together to clean and beautify the city.

The vision is to create opportunities for formerly incarcerated adults to take leadership roles while mentoring young people through hands-on community service. The program could also provide youth with opportunities to develop leadership skills, learn teamwork and responsibility, and potentially gain employment experience.

The goal is bigger than removing trash from the streets. It is about restoring neighborhoods while building relationships between generations and creating opportunities for people with lived experience to give back to their communities.

Jones believes the message is simple:

“We don’t talk trash, we pick up trash.”

The proposed collaboration seeks to bring Oakland nonprofits, formerly incarcerated leaders, youth, residents, businesses and community organizations together around a shared purpose — cleaning the town, beautifying Oakland and building a stronger community together.